The Claws of the N'longu, Ch. 4
The Ritual of the Dark Tribe
The blackness came and went from Blackpaw’s eyes and mind. When it left, he could see vague shapes and blurry colors and hear sounds that he almost recognized. Shuffling. Scraping. Crunching. Cracking. What he couldn’t do was move. He tried once, when a sudden shock of alertness struck him and pushed the blackness to its weakest point. He felt his muscles strain and something pulled hard against his wrists and ankles. It made them ache. Then one of the shapes struck him in the head again and the blackness came rushing back.
He remembered what happened before that. Everything from the behemoth crashing from the sky to the attack of the terror soarer was still clear in his mind. The memories became vague after the flying predator fell, though. He recalled his brother’s sense of alarm and how the small blue man had something in his neck. He remembered a sharp jab at the base of his own neck and the fiery pain that came with it. After that, just the hard crack upside his head and the throbbing aches that bloomed and receded in time with the fading and return of the blackness.
As he continued to fade in and out of consciousness, a nebulous sense of awareness slowly started to take shape in Blackpaw’s mind. He realized that he’d been captured. Whether the same was true of White-eye and the two pale skinned humans, he didn’t know. Who or what had captured him remained a mystery, too. Their forms were indistinct shadows to his addled mind and blurred eyes. Only when he had that moment of sudden alertness had he been able to see something: a vaguely human hand attached to a lanky arm, its skin ashy and gray. That same hand balled itself around a rock to club him into unconsciousness again when he tried to break whatever bonds they had him in, and he could see no more than that.
Whoever his captors, they dragged him through the jungle. He caught glimpses of the canopy passing overhead, but after a time the sky above them grew too dark to see anything else. He closed his tired, fluttering eyes then. His head ached from the two blows he’d taken and his skin still burned a little around his neck and shoulders. He didn’t wish to sleep, didn’t want the blackness to claim him again, but he couldn’t help himself. Consciousness retreated once more, and his dazed mind quieted for at least a short while.
When Blackpaw did wake, he found himself looking up at his bound hands. He’d been tied to a crudely cleaned chumpa tree branch, bound to it by thick vines at his wrists, ankles, and knees. He hung suspended beneath it, while the branch itself was suspended by two more lengths of vines in a roughly hewn clearing somewhere in the deep jungle. But where? He looked around. Everything was cast in flickering orange light from the many bonfires that encircled the clearing. In the places where these didn’t reach the pale glow of an overcast clouded moon painted the land and canopy in an eerie greenish light. Tall and craggy cliffs lined one end of this clearing, reaching up many times his own height to loom even over the colossal trees that surrounded them. A large rocky outcropping jutted from the cliff above him. The vines that suspended his branch hung taut over that outcropping, gently creaking as he slowly swayed back and forth.
But what of the others? Had they been taken elsewhere by their strange captors? Frantically he looked about, and he quickly spotted his brother. Like himself, White-eye had also been bound to a chumpa tree branch. However, his body was bound to it directly, with vines wrapping down the length of his body from his forehead to his neck, chest, arms, waist, and finally legs and feet. He struggled fiercely against them and his lip bled as he bit into it while he strained against the vines, but it was no use. Strong though he was, he was bound too thoroughly to break free.
Blackpaw called to White-eye, keeping his voice low. White-eye couldn’t turn his head with it bound against the branch, but he grunted in reply all the same. During his quick scan of the clearing, Blackpaw noticed no signs of their captors or the other humans. He wondered if perhaps White-eye had seen them. Unfortunately, he hadn’t, nor did he know where the small humans had been taken. He wasn’t even sure where they were, since he’d been stuck staring at the ground the entire time.
Grumbling, Blackpaw turned his head and spat toward the ground. He was going to try and explain some of what he’d seen when a sudden cry cut through the night. It was a long, loud whooping sound, which was followed by another, and then three more before it broke into a cacophonous chorus. Then, from beneath the near black shadows cast by the cliffside overhang, their captors finally emerged.
Naked save for thin strips of animal skin at their groins, the creatures which emerged from their place of hiding were tiny, gray skinned, and gaunt. Beads of clay and resin, as well as wood fetishes strung on lengths of vine or sinew, adorned their lanky and hairless bodies. They marched forward, many holding small spears or clubs studded with the teeth of predators, flooding out by the dozens from their hiding place beneath the dangling brothers. With sharp-toothed scowls on their faces, they looked about with beady yellow eyes as they made their way to the center of the clearing, where a wide circle of rocks had been made. Fanning out, they gathered all around it, leaving a wide path open that led back where they’d come from. They waited there for a long moment, grunting and hooting to each other until the whooping sound echoed again from beneath the overhang, silencing them.
Blackpaw looked to his brother, who stared down at the proceedings intently. Below them, the tiny man-like things, which couldn’t have stood more than waist high against the brothers, began to stomp their feet in ritual rhythm. Slow at first, their sunken yellow eyes watched the shadows intently. Then something moved within them, almost imperceptible at first, and their pace quickened. A moment later, another emerged from the darkness. Like the surrounding pygmies he was gray skinned and gaunt, but he stood nearly three times their height and where they were nearly naked, this one was cloaked in the pelt of a long-fanged cat and bore a string of finger bones about its neck. In both hands he cradled something wrapped in animal hide, and behind him a second procession of the gray pygmies followed, these ones painted in ritual pigments of blue, green, yellow, and black.
There were roughly a dozen following their tall leader. Each of them yanked and pulled on lengths of vine, trying to drag something out from the shadows. The thing thrashed, dragging three of the pygmies off their feet, but they kept hold of their vines. Once their feet found purchase on the ground again, they pulled hard, and their prisoner made a stumbling lope out from the shadows.
It was the terror soarer from earlier! Like the pygmies that drew it along, its body was also painted with lines and swirls of green, blue, yellow, and black. Vines were tied to its neck, ankles, and the base of the three-fingered hands at the middle of each wing. Opening its mouth wide, it thrashed its body to the left, this time pulling four off their feet! One of them arced close to the flying beast, close enough that it snapped its long beak around the miserable little creature’s body. In two swift snaps the terror soarer split the tiny man’s legs and head from his torso, then swallowed his trunk whole.
Still, even short one of their own, the painted pygmies were able to drag the beast along, forcing it ever closer to the ring of stones where their leader stood. Then, following behind the terror soarer, there came one last pair of the little gray fiends, each carrying a single lead. Blackpaw roared, and the pygmies below hooted up at him, casting stones that fell just short of striking his back. He howled back at them, too, lashing and writhing against his bonds as he watched the blue man and the yellow haired woman be dragged along by vines at their necks! They were both naked now, their pale bodies painted in the same four colors as the rest of the procession, but where the terror soarer was led to the edge of the stone ring, they stopped halfway.
The terror soarer shrieked at the tall pygmy leader. It was still being held by his retinue of painted followers, but when he stomped his foot on the ground they dropped the vines and scattered to the edges of the ring. Now free, the soarer stood up on its long clawed hind legs and spread its wings wide. The large tear White-eye made in the membrane of its right was still red and slowly dripping blood, but that did nothing to deter the long beaked monster’s intent to kill! Yet even as it started to lope towards him, the tall leader stared at it, unperturbed. His movements were calm and controlled, and he removed the hide wrapping from the object he cradled with a single swift pull. Then with a cry that was matched by the entirety of his tribe, he held the object high over his head.
It was an idol. Carved of glassy black stone that reflected the firelight, it depicted a terrible winged beast with claws like spears and teeth like stone knives! Blackpaw’s eyes went wide, for the creature it showed was a demon known to all the jungle tribes, the cruel and voracious N’longu! Curse it all, they’d been captured by the demon’s worshippers!
As the terror soarer stalked forward, the tall shaman chief howled and stomped his feet! First his left, then his right, then his left again! His tribe followed suit, hooting and stomping and shaking their small weapons in the air! Below them, Blackpaw could hear the small, pale humans talk in their complex tongue.
“Highfather’s name, what are they going to do to us?” the yellow haired woman whimpered.
“Nothing good, that’s for certain,” the formerly blue man replied. “Damn it all! If we could just get my pistol from that one, we might be able to scare these little bastards enough to make an escape!”
Blackpaw frowned, wondering why the man had nodded toward the painted pygmy who held his lead. Then he looked, and his eyes widened in surprise! He hadn’t noticed before, but the weapon the pygmy waved above his head was none other than the blue man’s thunder club! If Blackpaw could get his hands on it, then surely the powerful magic it had could be used to free White-eye and slay these little fiends! But how would he do that? He grit his teeth. He needed a way to break free, but he had no blades and his wrists were bound too tight to break the vines just by pulling them.
Below him, the cries of the demon worshiping pygmies grew louder! The terror soarer had loped into the stone circle, and as it approached the tall shaman he and his painted retinue began to chant!
“N’longu! N’longu! N’longu! N’longu!”
The beast warbled and started to clack its long, sharp beak as it drew closer to the shaman chief. Blackpaw gasped! That was it! He faced the branch he was bound to and the vines that secured his wrists. Then, with a grunt of effort and burning tension in the thews of his arms, he pulled himself up until his cheek pressed against his forearms and his lips pressed into the vines, and he bit! He bit and he gnawed and he chewed and he pulled, cutting into the vines with his crooked teeth!
Suddenly, a snap, and he felt the tightness around his hands loosen! Pulling hard, he finally broke free of his bindings! Catching hold of the branch with both hands, he gripped it tight and pushed hard with his legs! The vines slid against the smoothed branch until the ones at his ankles slipped off and slackened. Then he grabbed those that still bound his knees and pulled, using his hand and both legs to break them!
Dangling from the suspended branch, Blackpaw’s vine bindings fell in pieces to the crowd of pygmies below, followed soon by himself. He landed on all fours in the path between the pair that lead the pale humans, and both the humans and the pygmies screamed in surprise! Blackpaw snatched the pygmy closest to him by the head, the one that held the woman’s lead, then hurled him at the other! They crashed to the ground in a heap and the thunder club clattered to the dirt. Blackpaw grabbed it with a leaping spring, then used it to crush the skulls of the pygmy pair with two firm smacks of its rounded wooden butt!
Cries of outrage and fury echoed around him and he readied himself to fight his way through the murderous mob, but a final gargling howl from their leader silenced them. Blackpaw turned to face the stone circle, as did every other eye in the area. The terror soarer’s head was tilted up, its throat bulging as the feet of the shaman chief disappeared down its gullet. It heaved once, twice, and thick black sludge spewed from its mouth and oozed out its eyes! The snaps of breaking bones echoed through the clearing as the terror soarer convulsed. Its body bulged, and yet more sludge oozed from its flesh as its shifting bones opened up fresh wounds.
It slumped, sinking into a near shapeless mass of flesh and bone and ichorous ooze, and for a long moment it remained still. Until its eyes opened again, glowing bright with sickly yellow hate. Then it rose again, flinging the tarry sludge as it threw open its wings and let loose an ear piercing cry! The N’longu, the demon god of the jungle, had been reborn!
Thank you all for reading the chapter 4 of The Claws of the N’longu, my entry for a writing challenged posed by
to write a 10,000-20,000 word Howardian pulp adventure as part of our weekly Sword and Saturday pulp fantasy share-fest. If you’d like to participate, the final submission date is Saturday, Feb. 17th and specific details are available in the linked post.Chapter Word Count: 2,388
Total Word Count: 10,088
Excellent. The pygmies with a gray leader, demon worshipper, the stripped humans, the tied up natives, the action, the daring, and the terror soarer turning into black ooze, only to rise up again.
Great job.
Great chapter! This may be my favorite of yours yet.